No ‘What I Read’ post this weekend, but I did just came across this while flipping through Yi-Fu Tuan’s Space and Place. It’s a quote from nine-year-old Jim Hammer, whose family had lived in the same county in Illinois for six generations, and it ties into what I’ve written about here. Hammer is responding to a question about what his mother had taught him:

What did Mom teach me? For one thing, she taught me how to mow the lawn. She showed me how to tie my shoes…And she tries to teach me to live decent. Like some people don’t have a very good life because they don’t settle down in one place and don’t stay very long. They could live in Illinois for a while and then move to California. I like Illinois; it’s just my home state.